April 11, 2016 | Quoted by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta - Reuters

With new decree, Palestinian leader tightens grip

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has quietly established a constitutional court that analysts say concentrates more power in his hands and may allow him to sideline the Islamist group Hamas in the event of a succession struggle.

The nine-member body, which will have supremacy over all lower courts, was created without fanfare by presidential decree on April 3 and will be inaugurated once its ninth member is sworn in at a ceremony on Monday, officials said.

Critics say the body is packed with jurists from Abbas's Fatah party and risks deepening Palestinian political divisions. Fatah says it is Abbas's right to create the court, which it says is independent of the 81-year-old president.

“Neither the president nor any of the leaders (of Fatah) has a private agenda regarding this issue,” said Osama al-Qwasmi, the spokesman for Fatah in the West Bank. “The prime task of the constitutional court is to monitor laws. By the law, it is a completely independent body and we have full confidence in it.”

Abbas's decision comes at a time of worsening splits between Fatah and Hamas and as questions are raised about what will happen when the president steps down or if he were to die in office without a successor.

While Abbas may have the authority to create the court, which is being established 14 years after the Palestinians drafted a basic law, a form of constitution, some analysts see it as a way of circumventing opposition at a critical time.

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“It's a blatant power grab at a time when he knows he can get away with it,” said Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC.

“From Abbas's standpoint, this is his way of both thwarting his rivals in Hamas and securing his Fatah party's hold on the Palestinian Authority once he is gone,” Rumley told Reuters.

Rumley, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, regards the court as a potential barrier to reform.

“Rather than reforming his party, preparing for elections, or reactivating the defunct parliament, (Abbas) is creating another judicial body by presidential decree in order to, among other things, approve presidential decrees,” he said.

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Palestinian Politics